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FeatureArts & Culture

What to see at the 2026 Jewish International Film Festival

From Mel Brooks to Hannah Arendt, the Mediterranean to the Catskills, JIFF has films to make you worry, weep, laugh and love
Kathy Laster
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(Images: JIFF/2026)

Published: 16 September 2026

Last updated: 15 September 2026

JIFF documents Jewish resilience, giving a sense of the breadth of Jewish experience across time and space. 

This year’s program features some films that capture the present moment and many that explore familiar themes including family life, love, coming of age, the Shoah, Israel today, and a host of inspirational biographies.  

The art of the matter  

An Australian film that captures the Zeitgeist is Cancelled, by Danny Ben-Moshe. It records the experiences of four Australian Jewish artists who, post-October 7 and Bondi, find themselves navigating their careers in a climate of rampant antisemitism across the Australian arts sector.  

On a similar theme, the Israeli documentary, Noga, charts the personal and professional fallout after October 7 for Noga Erez, an Israeli artist and internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter caught up in the maelstrom of Israeli and international politics.  

It is scant consolation for contemporary artists that we have seen all this before. An American documentary, Mahler in New York, highlights the mighty composer’s legacy after he was forced to leave Vienna due to virulent antisemitism. The Mad Dog of Europe tells the story of Herman J Mankiewicz, screenwriter of Citizen Kane, whose arguably greatest creative output was never produced because of precarious politics and ubiquitous antisemitism. 

Celebrating Mel Brooks 

This year Mel Brooks turned 100, and JIFF honours him with a clutch of hilarious classics, including his audacious satire, The Producers and his spoof of Westerns, Blazing Saddles. Brooks was proudly and unapologetically a Jewish entertainer, who seems a fitting retrospective and an upbeat contrast to the films exploring the contemporary struggle against cancellation 

Israeli grief and struggle 

Two films deal explicitly with the pain of October 7. Find Me, Okay? was filmed over two years with the family and best friend of Eden Yerushalmi, who was kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza. It charts the public and private journey of the family through uncertainty, hope, and loss.  

The USA documentary, Choice, records how Holocaust survivor and noted psychologist Dr Edith Eger’s memoir gave solace and strength to the mother of Israeli hostage Yotam Haim. Yotam was killed by friendly fire during the IDF’s rescue mission in Gaza. In deep despair, his mother travels to California to hear Eger’s message on the power of choice, forgiveness and resilience.  

Grief also permeates the feature A Burning Man, a father and son road trip through the desert to take the soldier son to this base. The father is overwhelmed, and the film delves into the deep-seated anxieties of parents whose children are exposed to danger in times of war.  

Unravelling UNRWA lays bare the history of the UN relief effort to Palestinians, from 1948 to the present day. Using insider testimonies and archival footage, the documentary exposes UNRWA’s 75-year history, the organisation’s current dysfunction and its politics post October 7. 

Bridge building 

The Sea won Best Film at Israel’s Ophir Awards and is Israel’s entry to the Academy Awards. A mixed Palestinian and Israeli cast and crew tell the story of a 12-year-old boy, Khaled, who is taken on a school excursion to visit the sea for the first time. Denied entry at the military checkpoint, Khaled then embarks on his own tour of the streets of Tel Aviv in search of the Mediterranean. En route, he engages with a diverse cross-section of Israeli society. Variety magazine described the film as a “deeply humanist tale”.  

In a similar vein, the Israeli/German co-production, Where To?, offers a disarming portrait of an unlikely friendship between a young Israeli in Berlin and his regular Palestinian Uber driver. Over time, they learn to communicate in a way that defies the cultural and political divide between them.  

Closer to home, Freedom Rides documents the recreation of a defining moment in Australian history. To mark the 60th anniversary of the 1965 antiracism tour, a group of First Nations and Jewish young adults recreate the historic event and connect over the fight for justice. 

Humour and heart 

Simchas create a natural setting for both comedy and drama.  

The Israeli film The Wedding Entertainer is a comedy of manners where a disgraced Hasidic wedding comedian tries to find one last gig to raise the funds to marry off his daughter. 

The JIFF opening night offering, Just An Illusion, is set in the mid-80s and is a laugh-out-loud story of a sidelined bar mitzvah boy trying to find his place in his family and life in general.  

Ethan Bloom tells the tale of a Miami kid who decides he wants to convert to Catholicism. His baffled father makes a Faustian deal: he can keep going to church only if he studies for his bar mitzvah with the unconventional Rabbi Dani.  

Exploring antisemitism 

Sapiro v Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford is a documentary about a courageous Jewish lawyer who risked all to successfully challenge the vitriolic antisemitism of one of the most powerful men in 1940s America.  

The towering influence of Hannah Arendt is evident in several films. There’s the documentary Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny, which sheds further light on her life, especially her landmark book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.  

Arendt’s writing grew out of her work as a journalist covering the Eichmann trial, an experience that finds a parallel in Nuremberg 45, the story of a Holocaust survivor assigned to cover the Nuremberg trials and his moral qualms about his professional role as a journalist.  

Arendt’s observation about the banality of evil is also evident in A Man of His Time, a French biopic charting the motivations and modus operandi of an official in Vichy France, who did his job for the Nazis all too well.  

Date night 

The Soundman is a gentle story about a blooming relationship at a radio station in Belgium in 1940. Their passion for radio drama and each other becomes a beacon of hope amid darkening times: a romantic option for couples wanting a night to connect. 

A more in-your-face option is the American social satire, Influenced, a comedy about an aspiring social media personality realising what really matters in life. It will give you something to chew over supper. 

Feel-good docos 

A music documentary about the American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls will have you tapping your feet and appreciating the close connection of this Oklahoma-born balladeer to Jews and Yiddishkeit, which had a profound impact on his life and music. 

We Met at Grossinger's is a nostalgic look at one of the main resorts in the Catskills. The venue gave many Jewish entertainers their first break, was the setting for many matches, and helped form American Jewish identity.  

Local offering Who Are We is a documentary about Ajax, “the little football team that could,” and will offer many happy memories for former players and their parents. 

Inspiring Shoah biopics  

More than one quarter of the films in the program deal with the Shoah, many of them inspiring biopics of survival and resilience.  

Mariana’s Room relates the improbable survival of an 11-year-old boy hidden in a brothel.  

In Heroes of the Louvre, the Jewish night watchman is key to a secret operation to rescue the Louvre’s treasures from the Nazis. His condition is that he can take his family with him. The film is a family’s perilous odyssey across occupied France with a public-purpose twist. 

Another precarious journey is recounted in the Spanish film, Frontier, a thriller, accounting for how some 35,000 Jews surreptitiously crossed the French border into Spain. They did so with the help of an unsung civil servant and border townsfolk still reeling from the traumas of the Spanish Civil War. 

Acts of courage by a feisty older Jewish woman in Italy are the theme of Elena’s War.  

In My Underground Mother, an American journalist documents her quest to uncover the traumatic life and heroic deeds of her secretive mother.  

JIFF runs from 18 October to 26 November in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. 

Further information and tickets here  

The Jewish Independent is a sponsor of JIFF. Kathy Laster is co-chair of Kadimah’s Program Committee, a JIFF partner organisation.

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About the author

Kathy Laster

Kathy Laster

Professor Kathy Laster is the former Director of the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University and is currently on the Board of Kadimah. She has written extensively on law, language, culture and culture industry.

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